This data collection was designed to identify the party
characteristics, case attributes, and idea structures of written court
decisions related to Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Written
court decisions related to AIDS in state and federal courts were
located via the LEXUS and WESTLAW data systems. For a case to be
eligible, it had to address an issue involving AIDS or involve a party
who was believed to be infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus
(HIV), and a legal deci... (more info)

This data collection was designed to identify the party
characteristics, case attributes, and idea structures of written court
decisions related to Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Written
court decisions related to AIDS in state and federal courts were
located via the LEXUS and WESTLAW data systems. For a case to be
eligible, it had to address an issue involving AIDS or involve a party
who was believed to be infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus
(HIV), and a legal decision had to provide sufficient written material
to analyze. Coding was completed by three individuals with legal
training based on a team-developed codebook. Except in those areas
where a preliminary test showed 90-percent reliability, variables were
coded based on a consensus rule. Variables include court jurisdiction,
whether the case was civil or criminal, case issue area, gender of
plaintiff, relationship between parties, demand and primary purpose of
the demand by the defendant and the plaintiff, what the court
explicitly relied upon for its decision, whether the plaintiff or
defendant had AIDS, AIDS-Related Complex (ARC), or was HIV-infected,
and whether the plaintiff or defendant was gay, an IV drug user, a
prisoner or an accused criminal, a member of a stigmatized group, or a
racial or an ethnic minority. The unit of analysis is the written court
decision.

Scope of Study

Universe:
Written court decisions related to AIDS in the United
States during the period 1984-1989.

Data Types:
administrative records data

Data Collection Notes:

Undocumented codes were found in this data collection.
Missing data are represented by blanks.

Methodology

Data Source:

LEXUS and WESTLAW data systems

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1995-06-06

Version History:

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.